


straightjacket feelings (today i'm fine without you)

by rokosourobouros



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Non-Linear Narrative, Parent/Child Incest, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Canon, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26170342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokosourobouros/pseuds/rokosourobouros
Summary: Envy is starting to make a new life in Rizenbul - a little bit at the time. But the past doesn't go away so easily.
Relationships: Dante/Envy (Fullmetal Alchemist), Edward Elric/Envy, Envy/Greed (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28
Collections: RelationShipping 2020





	straightjacket feelings (today i'm fine without you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightpeltofThunderclan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightpeltofThunderclan/gifts).



> I do so love messing with post-03 Edvy dynamics. Given the energy and focus I could probably turn this into a fuckin. 10k fic. But hopefully this is still fun and enjoyable! 
> 
> TWs in place: past childhood sexual abuse as like... a big part of the plot (pls! be careful!), complicated trauma-coping, violent ideation, and I guess however on earth I tag that fear of rejection that half of the human population is plagued with.

_Try this on, straight jacket feeling  
so maybe I won't be alone  
Take back now, my life you're stealing_

_Yesterday was hell  
But today I'm fine without you  
Runaway this time without you  
And all I ever thought you'd be  
That face is tearing holes in me again_

_-straightjacket feeling, the exies_

He steals his new life in fits and starts, stolen kisses when Ed’s reading in an apple tree, watching from a distance as the Elrics build farmhouses, fix railroads, otherwise try to mend the world they had a part in breaking. The Parliament has power again; the role of Fuhrer is stripped of rank, reduced to a measly-sounding “Commander-in-Chief” to compete with a democratic President who suddenly has relevance again, but none of that matters out here in Rizenbul.

It shouldn’t really matter to him, either, and it doesn’t. But every time he reads a newspaper, or Ed mentions a new change in the government, he can’t help but feel guilty. It’s a complicated feeling. Not that guilt is ever particularly simple; when Greed left, he felt the guilt chew him up even though he knew it wasn’t earned, that it wasn’t his fault, that if there was anybody to blame it was his _bitch_ of a mother-

Envy throws the pear he’s contemplating against the barn’s wooden wall. Ed doesn’t know he sleeps here. Ed thinks Envy’s building some sort of life elsewhere, teases him (with an undertone of seriousness) that he’d better not be up to anything malicious. _No mass murder,_ he’ll prod with a faux-scowl, but it doesn’t hide the question in his eyes – _can I trust you? Can I really?_

There’s no easy answers to that. Envy would love to say yes. And Envy would also love to end one of their frantic sessions of kissing and groping with another knife through Ed’s chest, pinning him to the wall behind him, biting his blood-flushed lip as his life pours out for the second time onto Envy’s fingers.

\---

If anybody had asked Envy – and they don’t, because they’re rightfully afraid of his reaction, not to mention that ‘anybody’ is limited to Edward, Alphonse, and the always-distrustful Winry – when he’d changed his mind on… _everything,_ he probably wouldn’t have answered them. He certainly wouldn’t have answered them correctly. It takes more than two years of almost-complete loneliness to drag a heart out of the shadows, and Envy does battle with them every night, until he wishes he still had the strength in him to cry like a child instead of the sullen glare he falls asleep with.

The truth, if he was to be honest with himself, let anybody else, is that it only took a few months of cold-blooded shuddering on a stone floor to break the hold Dante had on him. Not an enchantment, or a spell. Nothing so arcane. It’s simply that – well –

The floor had been so cold. And he thought to himself, quietly, with all the substance of breath, that it was the first time he’d been _alone,_ completely alone, for…

Centuries.

And following up on the heels of that barely-there thought, the question of whether or not he wanted Dante there with him.

Of course not. He wasn’t some child desperate for his mother. And if Dante had been there, sharing a bed with him again, she would have asked him for the same things as always. His mouth between her legs. Kisses that almost felt real as she rode him, stroking whatever face he’d put on. Telling him that lie he didn’t believe that she loved him, of course, it was important that he realize that she loved him in a way that nobody else would.

The floor had been so cold, and Envy almost wanted company, and Envy wanted his mother, and Envy wanted his lover, and Envy couldn’t stop the shivers even when Ed showed up, questioning and concerned and asking if Envy couldn’t shift back at all. _Even you would be better than her,_ came the third thought, the ax-blow, and if he’d laughed a little inside at the frantic way that Ed had hop-skipped away from his snapping jaws, it hadn’t balanced out the sudden yawning void of uncertainty.

This sounds much cleaner than it actually was. Identifying thoughts is hard enough for most people. And Envy wasn’t exaggerating; he hadn’t been alone, _actually alone,_ for a very, very long time.

\---

Long before that, the day Envy woke up to an empty bed and Greed’s absence almost visible in the house, he’d had the opportunity to leave. He leaves this part out, when he tells people about Greed. He leaves most of it, actually.

But it’s why, you see, he can’t hate Greed more. Because Greed had left him a note with instructions on how to follow him.

If Envy had been a little older, or if Greed had stayed a little longer, solidified his hold on Envy’s heart in the silent custody battle taking place behind closed doors, perhaps things would have gone differently. But Envy knew the cost of disobedience too much to do otherwise – so of course he went to Dante.

He’d expected anger. Instead, Dante stared at him with tragic eyes, then sat down hard on her chair, hands going to her chest. Part of him – the part that Greed had cultivated – sneered at it, the obvious artifice of it.

“So,” she breathed, “the two of you were… I had thought, perhaps, I could –“

(This part still hurts to remember.)

Envy had watched her heart break, then given her the note, and kissed her, apologizing with all the breath he had. He wasn’t bitter yet, not enough to ignore her, not enough to spite her. And Dante had taken his face in her hands and kissed him back, comfort turning into something else, until he was on his knees for her again, making up for his infidelity with acts of service, proving to her that he was worth keeping. (It was easier to love her and harder to be afraid of her with his fingers inside of her, her hands tightening in his shirt or hair as her cheeks flushed, her back arching against the sofa, and she was beautiful, really, it wasn’t bad for him to think so, she told him he was beautiful too, sometimes.)

Dante caught up to Greed less than a day later. She sealed him in a prison designed to be cruel. And with him crouched and bound on the floor, she mocked him with the story of how Envy had so easily betrayed him. How Greed was stupid enough to think that Envy loved _him_ more than his own mother.

Envy had stood there and listened. What was there to say? It was all true.

\---

Ed catches him in the barn one night, rubbing his eyes sleepily and staring at Envy sprawled on the ground. “…What? What are you doing here?”

Envy tries to come up with an excuse. But Ed’s eyes are already flickering around the corner of the barn. The trinkets Envy collects. The half-bedroll, half-nest.

“…You could have come inside, you know,” Ed says with a note of slight exasperation.

Envy shakes his head. “I don’t live with people.”

“Why not? Too good for us? I’m pretty sure Al and Winry’s baking can change your mind-“

“That’s not why.”

Ed quiets down immediately. Envy hates that almost more. The pipsqueak’s more observant than he lets on – to _anybody,_ really – and even his handful of visits over the years in the other world gave him more information than Envy wanted _anybody_ knowing. It was better to be an enigma, unknown, misunderstood, than to be an open wound, vulnerable to whatever attacks were coming next. What was the point of being a shapeshifter otherwise?

“…There’s a couch in the room nearest the door, if that’s better,” Ed says finally. “But I’m not letting you sleep in the cold. You got enough of that.”

_How dare you care about me?_ Envy wants to snarl. But they’ve had this conversation before. Ed is too stubborn to stop caring, too much of a masochist to take Envy’s “piss-off” attacks as much more than flirting, and too good a fighter to die a _second_ time to the same person. The ‘ _I’m your half-brother’_ reveal only works the first time. Envy tries it – vocally, anyway, since he’s stuck as a dragon – at least one more time, and Ed’s only response is “Yeah, that just means I’m kicking your ass twice as hard for being a jackass. You’re giving me a bad name!”

So, instead, Envy sighs, gets to his feet, and lets Ed take him inside. He doesn’t fall asleep on the couch, though. Just thinks about why on earth he cares so much about having a way out, dwells on it, and ends up feeling miserable as the sun comes up.

It _is_ warmer, though.

\---

He didn’t come around on his own to such broad concepts as “I shouldn’t hate humans” or “maybe Ed and Al aren’t _that_ bad”. It was a more complicated process than that. It was more that – every time Ed insisted on sticking his nose into that big, lonely tower, cross-interrogates him about ‘you’re just eating _sheep, right_ ’ (Envy lied for a while to make sure he kept coming, and then gave up and just ate actual sheep), he ended up comparing them. He couldn’t do that before – he had a Mission ,and a Quest, no time for thinking or dwelling or self-reflection. But he kept seeing the parts of Ed that were Hohenheim, and by extension, the parts that must be Trisha, or Alphonse, or Mustang – other people.

And in comparison, Envy felt himself coming up…not _short_. But an awful lot of his reflection was made up of borrowings or responses to a single person. He’d never thought about it before, that despite his fierce declarations of independence, his life and identity were still wrapped around Dante. The pleasure he sought, the pain he craved, the validation he valued the most – all her. There were parts of him that came from Greed, or Lust, or even Gluttony, but they were all overshadowed, diminished.

Picking apart an identity wasn’t an easy task. There were threads that he couldn’t even guess at the origin of, lost in the fog of memory. So one day, when Ed came in for his bimonthly or whatever visit, Envy didn’t even bother snapping at him – just lay there, let Ed natter on about alchemy until he mentioned _the way home._

To this day, Envy claims he didn’t mean to react the way he did. He didn’t. Genuinely. Ed still doesn’t _entirely_ believe him, but that’s okay. He wouldn’t believe him either. The point is, that with Ed pinned to the wall, and Envy’s teeth pointed at him, he realized that he was thinking, _if you go home, I will be alone again._

And he’d stopped. Frozen in place. Waited until Ed pushed him aside, and said – in a stroke of either luck or an incredibly astute guess, _of course I’m taking you with me. It doesn’t work any other way._

\---

Envy starts, bit by bit, to get more comfortable with being Around. Ed’s clearly put together that this _is_ his life now, and keeps trying to make room for him. But he still ends up out in the barn a lot. It’s uncomfortable otherwise. Too close, too much, too hard to avoid the news about how all of Dante’s work is coming apart and try to pretend that he’s happy about it. He should be, of course. It’s just not so easy to rid himself of the feeling that he’s disappointing her.

The sex is good, too. Al and Winry clearly haven’t quite gotten their heads around the idea that Envy and Ed are a _thing,_ yet, although their hangups come from different places. Winry seems more uncomfortable with Envy as a person – which he gets an unreasonable amount of joy from – but he hears Al asking Ed in an undertone, “Isn’t he our _brother?_ ” Ed just responds in embarrassment, “Don’t think about it too hard,” and Envy shouldn’t laugh so much at that, but he _does._

But there’s comfortable and then there’s too comfortable. Envy starts to sleep in Ed’s bed with him sometimes, which means before bed, they fool around in the lamplight. And it almost feels like it could be _normal._

And it’s so normal, it feels so normal, that Envy’s mind is…elsewhere. He shifts, without thinking about it, or – that’s not right – he _does_ think about it, which is what makes it so much worse. Unthinking, he could blame on something else. But he _does_ think about it. He wants to make Ed feel good. He wants to please him. So he takes on Trisha’s face, her body, like shrugging on a jacket.

It takes him too long to react to the horror on Ed’s face – and then he’s being shoved away onto the floor. “What the _fuck?_ That’s not funny, I – jesus Christ, Envy! I thought you were _over_ this shit –“

Ed thinks, of course, that it was a cruel joke. That would be easier to claim. Easier to make work. But Envy’s so startled that the truth slips from his mouth. “I thought you’d like it.”

Ed’s hand is raised to hit him. He can see it. And it must be that this is in such slow-motion that Ed feels it too, because Ed _doesn’t._ He still looks so angry – but he looks confused, as well, and the confusion starts to clear, and the bottom drops out of Envy’s stomach because _he is putting it together, I can’t let him –_

So he turns into a bird, shedding the form that he’d taken so misguidedly. He isn’t sure where he goes. A tree. An orchard. A lake. It’s dark, and the shadows crawl over the ground, and he sits on the dew-soaked grass.

_I thought you’d like it._

Because everybody wants to fuck their mothers, right? That’s normal. That’s not –

This time, he _does_ cry. He hasn’t cried in centuries, he thinks. But this time, he does, because he can’t forget the way Ed _looked_ at him. He isn’t supposed to care. For most things he wouldn’t.

Being unknowable is easier.

\---

Lust was the only person Envy could remember – other than Greed, but he doesn’t think about Greed, not now, not ever – who said something about it. “Do you sleep with her because you want to?” she asked him in a quiet voice on a mission, once.

Envy pretended not to know what she meant at first. But when it was clear she wasn’t going to let it go, he shrugged and sighed. “I guess? I mean, why not? It’s just sex.”

“She’s your-“

“If you say mother, I’m going to slit your throat, Lust. She’s the _other one’s_ mother. I don’t remember any of that shit.”

Lust raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t concern you at all?”

“If she’s got a kink for fucking people raised from the remains of her dead kid, that’s her problem. _I’m_ getting sex out of it.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Lust folded her hands under her chin, slurping at the drink they’d bought at the café to blend in. How _human_ of her. “I just hope you can say no if you want to.”

“I _don’t_ want to, so kind of a moot point.”

Lust had dropped the topic after that – but the conversation had stayed in his mind. And weeks later, when Dante had wrapped her hands around his shaft, challenging him not to cum until she said he could, he fought through the lust of his own clouding his brain and tried to tell her to stop. But she just pretended she couldn’t hear it. Maybe she hadn’t. He hadn’t been very loud. But that was all he had the courage for – and besides, her hands felt so _good,_ and the rest were petty details, the kinds of things he didn’t have to worry about.

\---

Envy almost hopes that Ed will come find him, but he’s also glad that he doesn’t. For one, it’s not like Ed could find him in the dark. And secondly, it means that when he makes his way back to the Rockbell-Elric home, it’s on his own terms.

Ed’s sipping coffee on the front steps, waiting for him. And as if reading his mind, he says almost immediately, “Al and Winry are out for the day. There’s, uh, a farmer’s market in town.”

Envy doesn’t buy that coincidence for a second, especially since Winry cares more for gears and oil than fresh fruit, but it’s a good pretext. But he wishes he had something to do with his hands. The human art of apologies, talking through emotions – he doesn’t have experience with that.

Once again, he’s struck by how much easier it would be if he just went back to who he used to be. Two and half, three years ago, he could have buried a blade in Ed’s chest, kissed his neck and rutted against him as he struggled to stay alive. Even now, it’s tempting. But the loneliness afterwards, the silence – he can’t deal with that again.

“…So,” Ed says, breaking the tension slightly, “I’m guessing you _weren’t_ trying to fuck with me.”

Envy shakes his head, and he kind of wants to cry again, but not in front of Ed. Absolutely not.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed-“

“No, no, it’s totally something I would have done if I’d thought of it,” Envy tries to joke, but it falls flat, especially since Ed isn’t glaring at him or getting offended. He’s just looking thoughtful. Ed looking thoughtful is usually bad news for Envy’s defensive measures.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ed offers.

No. Yes. Yes. No.

“What’s there to talk about?” Envy sneers, and he’s trying to be facetious, but suddenly, he can’t stop. “My bitch of a mother fucked me and tricked me into liking it. And never let me forget that she was supposedly my mother, not that she ever acted like it, and that meant no wasn’t an _option._ So, no, there’s nothing I want to talk about. I just –“ And he’s so tired, he’s so _tired,_ he feels like he might crumple into a heap on the ground, the ash and bones he knows he’s made of –

He buries his face in his hands.

He’s never said it out loud before.

The others _knew,_ of course, because they lived there. But he’s never told anybody before. There was nobody to tell. No way out. No response he could safely have except the one that Dante wanted.

_I thought you’d like it._

He tries to breathe, and this is so stupid, he doesn’t panic, he doesn’t freak out – and so when he raises his head again, eyes closed, he’s at least a little calmer. “It won’t happen again,” he says as evenly as he can.

He opens his eyes. Ed is staring at his feet, chewing his lip.

“Stop that,” he demands. But when Ed looks up at him, he doesn’t know how to interpret that either.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? You didn’t have any part of it.”

“I know. I just – I scared you last night, didn’t I?”

Envy scoffs, although it’s true, then spontaneously shivers, even though it’s a warm day. “I don’t _get_ scared.”

“Fine, you stubborn ass. Spooked. Unnerved. Whatever it is.” Then Ed looks nervous again. “Is… this okay, then?”

“Is what okay?” Then Envy realizes what some of this is about. “Oh, you dumb fuck, are you freaking out about us being brothers?”

“Um. Maybe? I – when you bailed last night I sort of. I put some of it together. Which I know you hate me doing, sorry.”

Envy tries so hard not to roll his eyes. But this is _helping._ Ed is being Ed-like, which is comfortingly normal while Envy is feeling everything come apart. And Ed isn’t showing that disgust on his face anymore. So he sits down next to Ed, tries to feel that comfortable, normal feeling again. Not just yet – but he can feel the vestiges of it, like all he has to do is find the right spot.

“Just, you know. I don’t want you feeling like you owe me or some shit.”

“Me owing _you?_ You would not have gotten your ass back here without my help, thank you very much.”

“I know, I know. I just –“

_I just don’t want to hurt you._

Envy hates that Ed cares about him. He hates it, because it means that little warm, acknowledged feeling he’s having in response, the fearful realization that Ed genuinely wants to do the right thing, is something he can’t ignore.

“You’re awfully full of yourself,” he grumbles at Ed. Then he gives him a kiss on the cheek – playful, sure, but also a little bit of sweetness he allows himself – and disappears into the house.

\---

If only it were that easy. Maybe it is. But Envy keeps having nightmares about other reactions, other paths. He returns to the Rizenbul house and Ed pins him to the wall, rubs their cocks together while Ed calls him disgusting, broken, used up – he returns to a house in flames, a repeat of the past – he doesn’t return at all and it’s Dante who comes and finds him, pulling down the top of her dress and pulling his hands towards her.

He doesn’t stay. He can’t. Being known hurts too much. It’s like being scraped raw, every time he realizes all over again that Ed knows, _he knows the truth,_ at any moment now Ed will turn on him, demand details, demand… more. He can’t make himself say no, even when he doesn’t want Ed touching him, because every time he tries, he remembers how Dante pretended not to hear (and maybe if he says no, Ed will also not hear it, too excited to have Envy’s body to himself) (and maybe Ed will genuinely not have heard it but will it make a difference?) and he can’t even fully articulate why he leaves until he does.

It’s not forever. He offers his strength to another town, tries to help instead of hurt, and at night keeps facing down the demons. He lets human strangers screw him against the wall, but only once – and he practices telling him to stop.

He’ll go back, eventually. If Ed will have him. If Ed will believe that this was never about being loved enough, or loved by the right person in the right way. If things were so simple then, Envy thinks, there’d never be a broken person in the world. And this is what he tells himself, right up until the day he opens the door to Ed’s grinning face, holding the letter he sent and forgot to take the postmark off of. (Did he forget? Or was he leaving a trail, lonelier than he admitted, shivering even when he had the fire stoked?)

“I missed you,” Ed admits. “I’ll leave if you don’t want me here, but –“

“I missed you too,” Envy says.

A handful of years don’t balance out centuries of fear and anger. But it’s a start.


End file.
